Is it any different for those left behind if the black sheep had become Catholic or Buddhist or Muslim? Does it feel like a diss of the family? I meet a lot of people who convert to Judaism, but I don’t often get to ask their family what it is like for them.<\/p>\n
I imagine it was a nasty shock for my mother and father’s families when they become Seventh-Day Adventists circa age 16.<\/p>\n
I always felt distant from my relatives when I was growing up because of our Adventism (the rest of the family was nominally Anglican). <\/p>\n
I notice some people carry their religion lightly and other people wave it as a bloody flag. <\/p>\n
For many perhaps most of the people I grew up with, when they heard the news, they experienced my conversion as a rebuff to what they held dear. By converting, they felt I was saying they were wrong. <\/p>\n
If I lived in Australia during my 20s, I doubt I would have converted to Judaism. Australia by and large has one culture and orthodox Judaism is outside of that. <\/p>\n
In the United States, by contrast, there’s an ethos that you can become anything. <\/p>\n
It wasn’t a great trauma for my family when I converted to Judaism in 1993. It was just a continuation of my general weirdness. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Is it any different for those left behind if the black sheep had become Catholic or Buddhist or Muslim? Does it feel like a diss of the family? I meet a lot of people who convert to Judaism, but I … Continue reading